No More Learning

Pagett's mildest questions on these points, and he returned to vague
generalities, leaving the M. P. so much impressed with the crudity of
his views that he was glad on Orde's return to say goodbye to his "very
interesting" young friend.

"What do you think of young India? " asked Orde.

"Curious, very curious--and callow. "

"And yet," the civilian replied, "one can scarcely help sympathizing
with him for his mere youth's sake. The young orators of the Oxford
Union arrived at the same conclusions and showed doubtless just the
same enthusiasm. If there were any political analogy between India and
England, if the thousand races of this Empire were one, if there were
any chance even of their learning to speak one language, if, in short,
India were a Utopia of the debating-room, and not a real land, this
kind of talk might be worth listening to, but it is all based on false
analogy and ignorance of the facts. "

"But he is a native and knows the facts. "

"He is a sort of English schoolboy, but married three years, and the
father of two weaklings, and knows less than most English schoolboys.
You saw all he is and knows, and such ideas as he has acquired are
directly hostile to the most cherished convictions of the vast majority
of the people. "

"But what does he mean by saying he is a student of a mission college?
Is he a Christian? "

"He meant just what he said, and he is not a Christian, nor ever will
he be.
Good people in America, Scotland and England, most of whom would
never dream of collegiate education for their own sons, are pinching
themselves to bestow it in pure waste on Indian youths. Their scheme
is an oblique, subterranean attack on heathenism; the theory being that
with the jam of secular education, leading to a University degree, the
pill of moral or religious instruction may he coaxed down the heathen
gullet. "

"But does it succeed; do they make converts? "

"They make no converts, for the subtle Oriental swallows the jam and
rejects the pill; but the mere example of the sober, righteous, and
godly lives of the principals and professors who are most excellent and
devoted men, must have a certain moral value. Yet, as Lord Lansdowne
pointed out the other day, the market is dangerously overstocked
with graduates of our Universities who look for employment in the
administration. An immense number are employed, but year by year the
college mills grind out increasing lists of youths foredoomed to
failure and disappointment, and meanwhile, trades, manufactures, and the
industrial arts are neglected, and in fact regarded with contempt by our
new literary mandarins in posse. "

"But our young friend said he wanted steam-engines and factories," said
Pagett.

"Yes, he would like to direct such concerns. He wants to begin at the
top, for manual labor is held to be discreditable, and he would never
defile his hands by the apprenticeship which the architects, engineers,
and manufacturers of England cheerfully undergo; and he would be aghast
to learn that the leading names of industrial enterprise in England
belonged a generation or two since, or now belong, to men who wrought
with their own hands. And, though he talks glibly of manufacturers, he
refuses to see that the Indian manufacturer of the future will be the
despised workman of the present. It was proposed, for example, a few
weeks ago, that a certain municipality in this province should establish
an elementary technical school for the sons of workmen. The stress of
the opposition to the plan came from a pleader who owed all he had to a
college education bestowed on him gratis by Government and missions.
You would have fancied some fine old crusted Tory squire of the last
generation was speaking. 'These people,' he said, 'want no education,
for they learn their trades from their fathers, and to teach a workman's
son the elements of mathematics and physical science would give him
ideas above his business. They must be kept in their place, and it was
idle to imagine that there was any science in wood or iron work. ' And he
carried his point.